Central Godowns for the Indian Dairy Corporation Nanded, Maharashtra, 1982
Central Godowns for the Indian Dairy Corporation Nanded, Maharashtra, 1982 © Anant Raje Foundation

...[Less] interesting is the Mafco Dairy in Bombay. Here the very rigid organization of the layout is probably influenced by the productive cycle. Tradition is therefore an important reference point to Raje. But in what sense? It is not a nostalgic harping back to a way of life, which in India is still at the basis of many traditional spaces of the city and of the village, nor is it, even less, a stylistic reference to one of the numerous Indian styles of the past (in this he goes against the manual of the eclectic Batley); nor again is it an abstract, useless reference to so-called "poor" technologies (Rage does not use certain futuristic materials as unfortunately certain Indian colleagues are starting to do). I would say rather that his attention to tradition lies in the meaningful use he makes of each material. Seizing with his empirical sense, from time to time, the expressivity of the material and each time discovering new potentialities of materials that are as old as the world itself. To the "craftsman" Raje, therefore, tradition is the great edifice of the History of Construction, to which it is always possible to add a stone, without every time destroying its foundations.1

  • 1. Petruccioli, Attilio. "Profile: Anant D. Raje". Environmental Design: Journal of the Islamic Environmental Design Research Centre, edited by Attilo Petruccioli, 68-75. Rome: Libreria Herder, 1984. pp 75